1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for accessing a file system, in a computer system having a storage, the storage provided with a file system, the file system storing for each file a first file name, metadata and file contents. In particular, the present invention relates to exchanging files between computer systems or between a computer system and a reprographic apparatus.
2. Description of Background Art
A file system implements on a bare storage medium an environment where files can be stored and operations on files can be carried out. The file system organizes all files and directories on a storage device. A variety of file systems are known. A well-known file system is the FAT (File Allocation Table) file system.
A disadvantage of this file system is limitations posed on the length of the file name and the length of the extension and on the character set that is supported.
An operating system of a computer system has the task to carry out operations on the file system. Not all operating systems provide support for all file systems.
When one exchanges files between computer systems by means of a portable storage device, provided with a particular file system, both the source operating system and the destination operating system must be able to handle the file system.
For compatibility reasons, often the FAT file system is implemented on a portable storage device. However this poses limitations on i.e. the file name as indicated above.
If a portable storage device is used to print files on a printer, a list of files available on the storage device, when mounted on the printer, will be displayed on the operator screen for selection by the user for printing. This is shown in FIG. 1. In this case, if a user attaches the removable storage (101) to a copier/printer/scanner multifunctional device, also referred to as an MFD, this MFD will display on its operator panel (102) identifiers of all files that it is capable to print on the user interface display. In order to do so, the MFD will read the names from the file properties (104) and examine the contents (105) of the files stored in the attached file system (106) of the removable storage. Again, the names are subject to changes because of the capabilities of the used file system on the MFD. This problem is very observable when an FAT file system is used, which limits the number of characters to the 8.3 format (8 characters for the name, followed by a dot and three characters for the extension, indicating the type of the file) and allows only the character-set as defined in ASCII.
At the moment, if the user wishes to select files in a possibly large list of other files on the display of the MFD, the user must be able to distinguish the presented file-identifiers from a possibly large list. Presenting only the filename, or what is left of it, may not be the best possible method for this purpose.